The concept of immune surveillance against tumors: The first theories

The immune system plays a major role in the surveillance against tumors. To avoid attack from the immune system, tumor cells develop different strategies to escape immune surveillance. Evidence of immune surveillance comes from both animal models and clinical observations. Mice with a wide variety of immunodeficiencies have a high rate of tumor incidence and are more susceptible to transplanted or chemical carcinogen-induced tumors. Immunosuppressed patients have a high incidence of tumors. However, many patients develop cancer even in the presence of an apparently normal immune system. This indicates that tumor cells are able to escape immune surveillance. The aim of this review article is to summarize the literature concerning the development of the theory of immune surveillance against tumors; to discuss the evidence for and against this theory, and to discuss the concept of immunoediting. Finally, the current approaches in anti-tumor immunotherapy will be analyzed.

• Publication year

  2016

• Venue

  OncoTarget

• Publication date

  2016-10-18

• Fields of study

  Biology, Medicine

• Identifiers
  DOI 10.18632/oncotarget.12739PMID 27764780PMCID 5351698
• External record

  Open on Semantic Scholar

• Source metadata

  Semantic Scholar, PubMed

• No claims are published for this paper.

• No concepts are published for this paper.

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